We did it! – Winning the ICANN campaign

On August 17, just one letter was posted in opposition to ICANN’s proposed changes to the domain name system.

The day before the public comments closed, August 27, forty-two letters in opposition were posted.

One the final day, starting from a standing start at 9 AM, we – and by “we” I mean readers of the Ken McCarthy blog – posted twelve full pages with sixty-two letters per page in opposition. That’s 744 letters – almost twenty times the previous day.

Here’s how we did it…

First, how many of the letters in opposition came from us?

We can estimate this by seeing how many letters had the phrase “variable pricing” in the subject line. That was the phrase the article I wrote suggested that people focus on. You don’t see the phrase in letters posted to ICANN before my blog article appeared Monday morning so it makes for a good marker.

Here’s a rough guess of how many letters our group generated in less than 12 hours from a standing start:

12 pages x 62 letters per page x 90% of letters mentioning “variable pricing” in the header.

Approximately 670 letters!

You can do your own count here:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/biz-tld-agreement/index.html

This is a very quick and dirty rough estimate so let’s round it down to 500 to be conservative.

In short – by any standard – we rocked the house.

How did it happen?

Two ways: one traditional and one web 2.0.

1. Traditional: My list.

I’m convinced I have the smartest, most progressive, most action-oriented group of Internet entrepreneurs in the world on my list. This campaign proved it. No other Internet group posted anywhere near as many letters as we did. We were the dominant force by far.

2. Web 2.0: Digg.com

A subscriber posted a well-crafted summary of the blog article to Digg.com and then let me know about it.

If you don’t know what Digg.com is, you should invest some time in learning about it. It’s the web site that propelled Alex Tew’s “crazy” pixel ads idea into mass awareness.

First, Alex mailed to his small list. His web site got picked up by Digg.com where people went wild over it. Then it got picked up by the mass media starting with the BBC and in short order, Alex became a media millionaire. (I’m less than convinced about the value of what he was actually selling, but that’s another issue for another time.)

Like all Digg posts, our post started out as one post among thousands. Once I saw that we were on Digg’s radar, I sent new readers to the Digg link instead of directly to my blog.

The more people who went to Digg and gave the article a thumbs up, the more prominent the article became on the Digg web site.

First, we were tagged as an “up and comer.”

Then, we made it to Page One of the Technology pages.

Then, for a brief shining moment, we were on Page One of the Digg home page itself, as a result of receiving over 1,000 thumbs up from Digg readers.

Net result: Over 10,000 visitors came to the blog article from Digg in less than twelve hours from a standing start – and, as we saw, 500 or more letters in opposition to the proposed changes in the domain name pricing structure were posted to the ICANN site.

You can see the Digg post here:

http://digg.com/?s=icann

I’m sure some people are probably thinking at this point, “OK, but how can I use Digg to get rich?”

You can certainly use Digg to get greater exposure for your ideas.

If your idea catches on with the Digg community, you stand to get a lot of traffic fast.

In my case, I wasn’t looking for sales or leads. In fact, virtually none of the Digg traffic stuck around to read my other articles. That’s fine. What I was after was for people to be informed about the subject and take an action in their best interest – and they did.

The proposed domain name rule changes were a hot button issue which contributed to the massive popularity of the post:

1. It applied to virtually all Internet users in one way or another
2. It represented an immediate threat to the Internet as we know it – and our “way of life”
3. The subscriber who posted the summary of my blog article did a good job of dramatizing the issue
4. There was a tight deadline for action
5. The action called for was clear, straightfoward and relatively simple.

(Note: The action rate was 5%. Approximately 10,000 visitors composed and posted about 500 letters.)

Warning…

I’m sure there are some Internet marketing sleazebags who are going to try “package” the method I just described as an expensive, whiz-bang, hype-drenched program to “game” Digg to sell junk products.

Please ignore these people when they start pitching second-hand, watered-down BS on this subject a year – or two – from now.

I’ve just laid out the whole method for you.

There’s no need to buy a “new and improved” method.

If there’s more to it, the best way to find out what that “more” is is to start using Digg and make your own discoveries.

Some principles that will help you understand and succeed with Digg:

Rule #1:

Don’t “game” Digg. It’s disrespectful and probably won’t work. If you have something of real value to contribute, by all means post it to Digg and encourage traffic to the Digg post in natural ways.

Rule #2:

Become a Digg community member and user first and get a feeling for what the community and its mission are all about before you post anything.

Rule #3:

Digg is a pretty smart, fast-acting community. If you think you’re going to “game” it with pitches for get rich quick schemes and other junk, think again. Digg members can and do give a thumbs DOWN as well as a thumbs up to posts and they can – and do – take articles off the site with their collective disapproval.

As popular as my blog post was, it did get some thumbs down from a few readers who didn’t like some of my wording. I happened to get overwhelmingly MORE thumbs up than thumbs down, but if I had gotten more thumbs down, the article would have languished in limbo as the vast majority of Digg posts do.

Final point: Digg.com is a great source of free quality info on all kinds of subjects. Use it. Don’t abuse it. Contribute value to it. Don’t game it.

And celebrate our victory.

I don’t know what ICANN is ultimately going to do, but they definitely failed in their attempt to slip this proposal by us in the dark of the night and they’ve got to know that the world is watching which is step one to making powerful monopolies come to heel.

– Ken McCarthy

P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.

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